Calls for Bristol Children's Hospital to suspend operations

PARENTS whose children died after heart surgery at Bristol Children's Hospital are calling for similar operations to be suspended while an investigation is underway.

But managers have insisted there is not a "major problem" at the hospital, which they say has some of the best results in England.

The call comes after the trust in charge of the hospital revealed it was reviewing the last 50 child heart deaths, in a report ordered in response to concerns raised by the parents of Cardiff seven-year-old Luke Jenkins, who died in April after a planned corrective cardiac operation.

University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the children's hospital, said the review would probably look back about four years.

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Regulator the Care Quality Commission has also confirmed that it inspected the hospital last month and is about to publish a report.

Luke's father, Stephen Jenkins, said: "In other hospitals where children died, such as Oxford, they stopped surgery. They need to stop surgery in Bristol and put some proper plans in place, not just fob people off saying things are fine."

Mr Jenkins, 31, said that he was disappointed hospital managers had referred to his son as a sick child when responding to his concerns.

"Luke was playing on the morning of the operation and went to Bristol Zoo the day before – it was not like he was an emergency case," he said.

Four-year-old Sean Turner, of Warminster, died of a brain haemorrhage in March after a planned operation to correct a heart defect.

His parents, Yolanda and Stephen, believe he would not have died if he had received appropriate care after surgery.

Mrs Turner said Sean was moved from intensive care at the children's hospital to ward 32, a recovery ward, after just a day. She said she was told he would be cared for in a high dependency bed but since complaining about the care of her son the trust had confirmed it does not have a high dependency unit at the hospital.

"I think cardiac surgery should be suspended while they investigate what after-care problems that they have there," Mrs Turner said.

A solicitor who represented the families of youngsters who died during the original Bristol heart scandal said the latest complaints had "echoes of that grim past".

Laurence Vick, of law firm Michelmores, is still dealing with four cases of babies who suffered brain damage following surgery in Bristol between 1984 and 1995, when up to 35 babies died unnecessarily because of sub-standard care.

"These problems are not a one-off – these families know that their incidents were not a one-off and they were the seventh and eighth serious incidents on the ward just this year," Mr Vick said. "Until these problems are ironed out and it is known what the problems are I think there is an argument for suspending surgery."

UHBristol spokeswoman Laura Treasure said: "We do not believe this is a major problem at the hospital. We have some of the best outcomes in England. All paediatric cardiac surgery carries with it significant risk, including Fontan (the operation Luke Jenkins underwent). These risks would have been fully explained to the parents, including that these are very complex procedures on very sick children.

"Bristol Children's Hospital's published mortality rate for children is one per cent and, as such, is amongst the best in England."

Ms Treasure said the decision to check the 50 most recent paediatric cardiac deaths would not only relate to those involving surgery.

"Very few of these 50 cases would relate to infants and children undergoing cardiac surgery," she said.

Comments

This is such a terrible turn of events which quite frankly should not have happened. There are alot of people who have raised issues and stated what needed to be addressed a very long time ago. It is grossly irresponsible to carry out heart surgery on children and not have a high dependency unit. As others have pointed out there is a review into the number of units offering childrens heart surgery but sadly patient care has not been put at the forefront of how and where children's' heart surgery is provided. Instead games have been played with statistics and definitions have been changed. In fact many recommendations from the original Bristol inquiry have been changed or it is now proposed that they will not be implemented. Any action being carried out in other parts of the country is not stopping Bristol from making improvements to its service is NOT putting children's lives at risk in Bristol. The issues at Bristol need to be addressed by those who are running the service in that region and it is their responsibility to ensure that safe care is provided for the children in that region. Unfortunately, alot of input in the future of childrens heart surgery has come from those running the service in Bristol which is why it has not been deemed mandatory to have a high dependency unit in the hospitals which provide childrens heart surgery in the future. Sadly this is not the only flaw in the current review.
My thoughts go out to all those parents and families who have suffered and continue to suffer.

There needs to be an independent inquiry, commissioned by the Health Secretary to look at why Bristol has not learned from the Bristol Royal Infirmary Heart Scandal of the 1990s.
University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust cannot be trusted to commission its own inquiry into the last 50 children's deaths as we have seen from the farce of the Inquiry into histopathology misdiagnoses it commissioned in 2009. Some witnesses to that inquiry, including doctors, claim that their evidence was used selectively or even ignored, and that this was done deliberately to try hide the truth about unsafe care.
http://tinyurl.com/6yt7bpw
All these scandals - 1990s Bristol Heart, Bristol Histopathology and now Ward 32 have one thing in common - failure of clinical and corporate governance that nobody is held publicly accountable to explain. It needs to be sorted in Bristol once and for all, as do the people responsible for the failures.
The Trust has been quoted ""Each incident, no matter how minor it may appear, is recorded, rigorously investigated and actions taken forward as part of our clinical governance process."
Not according to this report published in May 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/cp4p7gs
The Trust's claims that its mortality rate for paediatric cardiac surgery is among the best in England should be regarded with suspicion unless it is proved to be correct by independently reviewed data.
As "by Bristol" points out, it's easy to play games with statistics. Is this what has happened in Bristol to protect the reputations of staff at the expense of safe care for children and to enable the Trust to grab the additional revenue that comes from being designated one of the seven national centres for paediatric cardiac surgery?
The only way to find out is an independent inquiry NOT commissioned by the Trust. It should be a Public Inquiry because as history shows us (1990s Bristol Heart Scandal and more recently the Mid Staffordshire Scandal), a Public Inquiry is the only way to get close to the truth. It must be held in public and witnesses must be compelled to attend and give evidence under oath.

This is desperately worrying, as the stopping of heart surgery at other units around the country means that more children are going to have to go to Bristol. Perhaps this is why they won't suspend surgery while looking into the problems?? If they do, the whole plan for reconfiguration of services will fall apart, and as seeing that through is more important to those in power, than anything else, I don't believe that there will be a truly independent review into the problems these families have identified.

Lolly60,
You are correct; all parents facing children going through heart operations understand the risk, they don't take the decision lightly. These are the time parents rely on hospitals to look after their children, unfortunately this has not been the case in these situations and there has been a catalogue of error that have not been published yet. We should all try and make sure vulnerable children are safe, if they are not, something needs to be done.
http://tinyurl.com/9yzq726 follow @bristolinquiry (on twitter)

In the case of Sean Turner he will probably not appear in the 50 most recent paediatric cardiac death statistics, as he died of a brain haemorrhage due to hospital failures. How many other children fall into this category, this is too easy for the hospital play statistics the way they need to so they look good. There needs to be a public inquiry to look into the true picture of child deaths at the Bristol Children's Hospital.
http://tinyurl.com/9yzq726 follow @bristolinquiry (on twitter)